Chinese and Asian art top sales at recent Christie’s and Sotheby’s auctions

September 26, 2012

One of the biggest news circling around the art scene recently was the setting of a Joint-Venture between Sotheby’s and a Beijing-based company to penetrate the China art market. After all, China represents the largest amount in terms of art collection in the world today. Hence, it was no surprise when the Fall Asian art sales in New York last week saw some of the fine Chinese art works being sold at monumental prices.

Christies’ and Sotheby’s, 2 of the largest auction houses in the world auctioned off a combined total of USD$90million, about 3 times the pre-sale estimated prices. The former reached USD$44.7 million through 5 sales while the latter sold 3 amounting to USD$46million through works mainly from Asia like Korea, India, Japanese and China.

Jonathan Stone, the chairman and international head of Asian Art of Christie’s said that participation of their auction came from around the world which proved that there is a strong and growing demand for Asian art. In fact, Christie’s sales have enjoyed some tremendous improvement through the sale of Asian art and the figures had more than doubled in the past few years.

Meanwhile, the vice-chairman of Asian art of Sotheby’s Mr Henry Howard-Sneyd said that there has been some very clear signs that the Asian art market is growing rapidly in the last 5 to 6 years and it is more so in countries like China. One of the highlights of Sotheby’s sale is a rare blue-and-white moonflask form the Ming Dynasty which was discovered as a doorstop in a home in Long Island was expected to sell between USD$600,000 to USD$900,000 but as eventually auctioned off for USD$1.3million.